Untitled
by likeaplacebo
Summary: A shipment of blood is late in arriving and not wanting to deal with hungry blood-sucking adolescents Dr. Murdoc goes to pick up the shipment himself...he brings Marty along. Marty meets a dying girl. Fic is not yet finished.
1. Page One

Disclaimer: For the purposes of this story one has to assume that Dr. Murdoc gets his blood from a hospital nearby,  
thus he knows someone on staff, thus I am not insane! He is going to pick a late delivery blah blah blah...  
Marty meets a sick girl. Read on.  
  
  
  
  
Untitled  
  
  
The harsh flourescent lights of the corridor made the edges of every object appear too sharp, vivid to the degree of being surreal. Marty cast a glance to a few wheel chairs that sat, slightly askew, next to the nauseating egg-shell white wall to his left and found himself toying idly with the idea of challenging Dr. Murdoch to a race as they continued walking to the nurse's station.  
  
The girl at the desk could have been little more than seventeen. The shrill lighting made her skin faintly yellow as though jaundiced and briefly the pale pink of her lips caught the lurid luminescence and gleamed a garish red. She was wearing the garb of a candy-striper, a red and white striped uniform and a tag that proclaimed her name was 'Joy'. Her hair was the semi-sun-bleached blonde one would associate with old beach party movies, though her face was pleasant enough and Marty gave her a half-hearted smile.  
  
"Excuse me, miss?" Dr. Murdoch said, his voice hinting with the same authority he used to subdue his unruly blood-sucking charges.  
  
"Yes?" she raised her head from some haphazard notes she had been taking, revealing a set of striking blue eyes as she turned her attention to the two standing at her desk.  
  
Dr. Murdoch cleared his throat, "I have had an arrangement with this," he paused as though searching for the right word then pressed on, "establishment for a few months time now." He met the girl's gaze, "I have never had any extreme problem in receiving a shipment. Yet it seems this time your superiors have entirely overlooked the fact that they have an order to deliver to me and..."  
  
"Dr. Murdoch?" the girl's face lit with sudden recognition. "I've been trying to get a hold of you all day but I couldn't get through. Mr...um...Dr. Fitzgerald told me that I was to tell you that the delivery man is ill and that you'd have to come and make the pick-up yourself," she blushed furiously and stood up, "Of course, you seem to have already figured that bit out on your own. I can show you where the boxes are..."  
  
Dr. Murdoch sighed, seeming genuinely relieved by the fact that he wouldn't have a pack of hungry vampiric adolescents to deal with, "That would be very kind. Thank you." He turned from the girl to face Marty, "Marty? come along."  
  
"I'll just wait here," Marty leaned against the desk, pretending he didn't see Dr. Murdoch's wary expression. "I'll play nice, I promise," he added as an afterthought.  
  
"You'll stay right there," Murdoch raised a brow, his voice not questioning but suddenly commanding.  
  
"Sure."  
  
"Fine," Dr. Murdoch said in the tone of a defeated father giving in to a child's whine for a toy. He threw a slightly disapproving glance over his shoulder as he and the girl began walking, turned a corner and disappeared.  
"Hello," a little voice called. Marty peered into the room across the hall, which seemed to be the source of the gentle greeting, to see a small girl smiling at him from a hospital bed. She lay with her head turned towards him, the rough flannel hospital cover drawn up around her thin neck. Her face was serene as a cherub's and the smile she wore made her features all the more soft and warm. "What's your name?" she questioned in the same devastatingly sweet tone.  
  
He moved a little nearer to the doorway, "I'm Marty. What's your name, kid?"  
  
"Sara."  
  
"Hello Sara," he felt himself returning her smile as he leaned against the doorframe. "What are you in for? Having your tonsils out or something?"  
  
"No," she said softly, her voice exchanging all of its sweetness for an underlying sound of hurt. Her vivid dark gaze wandered for a moment, then she turned back to him and was again all smiles and jovial innocence as she held out a half-finished chocolate pudding cup in his direction, "Want some? It's pretty good."  
  
Marty wrinkled his nose at the prospect, "Eww, chocolate pudding? How did you ever develop a taste for that nasty stuff?"  
  
Sara pressed a small hand to her mouth to stifle her laughter. "I like you," she said in that oddly matter-of-fact way all children state their thoughts. She looked up at him and grinned, her straight black hair falling forward to slightly obscure her small, pale face, like a veil of mourning.  
  
"You like me?" he paused, "Heh, I don't normally get that reaction."  
  
A look of bewilderment touched her features, "Why not?"  
  
"I'm just so scary and mean," he feigned a growl.  
  
She raised an eyebrow, "My big brother's scarier than that...oh, and he smells funny." She hesitated and then concluded, "He's meaner too, he took my doll and pulled off her head."  
  
"Oh, that monster!" Marty cried in mock alarm, pressing his hands to either side of his face to look comically like a frightened victim in some B-Horror-Flick. "He has to be stopped."  
  
Between giggles she asked, "Could you maybe come in and play a game with me, Marty?"  
  
"I'd like that," he moved to her bedside and sat in a poorly cushioned chair. She fumbled for a deck of cards that sat on the table beside the bed and then lay them on the mattress beside her. Marty eyed them curiously, "Do you know how to play poker, Sara?"  
  
"No, I only know 'Go-Fish'."  
  
"Would you like me to teach you?"  
  
Her head bobbed eagerly in reply and another beautiful smile made her face sun-shine bright. He gathered the cards into his hands and shuffled. 


	2. Page Two

"Marty?" Dr. Murdoch called from somewhere outside the small hospital room, his voice brimming with some half-restrained emotion which was rapidly becoming volatile. Whether it was rage, fear, confusion, or all of the above, Marty wasn't entirely sure.  
  
"I'm in here," he replied, raising his head just in time to see a flush-faced Dr. Murdoch standing in the doorway. "Calm down, Doc, we were just playing cards," he gestured helplessly to the little girl.  
  
"And I'm kicking his butt," Sara added, flashing a look of utter happiness at Marty.  
  
For a moment Dr. Murdoch only gaped at the pretty little child that was smiling so warmly towards the vampire sitting at her bedside. Of course, this was certainly better than the mangled corpses he had been anticipating and thus he was relieved. His hands which had until that instant been balled into fists slowly relaxed.  
  
"It's true, my butt is officially being kicked by a nine year old," Marty laughed.  
  
She stuck out her tongue at him, "If it helps I'm gonna be ten in two days."  
  
"Nope, that really doesn't help the situation Sara," he ruffled her hair and smirked.  
  
"We should be going, Marty," Dr. Murdoch's voice sounded reluctant and the comment seemed forced as he gazed at the child who began to wring the harsh fabric of her blanket between her fingers at the mention of losing her playmate.  
  
"Couldn't I stay a little while longer?"  
  
"Can he?"  
  
"Please?" their voices joined in unison on the final plea like a pair of toddlers desperate to convince their mother that letting them have a sleep over would the best possible thing in the whole wide world ever.  
  
"I wish it were possible but..." he couldn't resist taking on the fatherly role in the midst of all the genuine childishness, "...it's almost your bedtime, Marty."  
  
Marty squinted his eyes in puzzlement and then it struck, the chime of some internal clock that screamed of the approaching dawn. "I really do have to go," he said, then he leaned closer to the girl and grinned impishly as Dr. Murdoch tensed. He whispered in her ear, "I'll come by and see you again."  
  
She smiled at his words and turned her head so that she could see him, "Promise?"  
  
"Yeah," Marty stood up and drew an 'x' across his chest with his index finger like a peculiar target, "Cross my heart."  
  
"Okay," she was suddenly resplendent, "Bye Marty." 


	3. Page Three

"That little girl really took a shine to you," Dr. Murdoch observed as he ushered Marty back out into the hospital hallway. His lips were drawn up into that familiar fatherly smile which made all the little lines near his too-bright eyes suddenly more sharp and noticeable.  
  
"Well, I am irresistible," Marty noted, tossing one last absurdly affectionate glance to the child who lay curled up under the flannel sheet, already drowsing, as they began to walk back towards the nurses station.  
  
Dr. Murdoch laughed, a bright and genuine sound. "More like incorrigible," he said instinctively and the words won a grin from Marty. He added as an afterthought, "Do, help me with the boxes."  
  
There were two large white cardboard boxes labeled 'Fragile' piled before the desk where Joy had again busied herself with some notes – notes which had to be written in code because even when he was close enough to see the words Marty would be damned if he knew what she was scrawling. She seemed to be making a vain effort to ignore the two of them as they neared her.  
  
"Just, uh, let me clarify something," Marty said in a very analytical tone. "By, 'help you with the boxes', you mean that I am to carry them all out by myself, right?"  
  
"That was the general plan, yes," Murdoch smiled. In spite of knowing, on some level at least, what the creature standing before him was capable of he felt an curious wave of fondness for him, a feeling which could really only be described as the warm and sudden tenderness one might experience while looking down at a sleeping baby or a kitten.   
  
It struck him then how odd it was to think of Marty in such terms.  
  
"Right," Marty laughed, "Just checking."  
  
He closed the rest of the distance between himself and the nurse's station, glancing only briefly at girl dressed in the candy-cane-colored clothing before he hunkered down to pick up the boxes. The packages were awkward in his arms and as he stood he adjusted their position, allowing them to lean securely against his chest.  
  
"I'm sorry, I could have gotten you a hand-dolly or something...I didn't even think," Joy apologized vehemently and stood up as though ready to dash off immediately and get one should it be requested. "I could still..."  
  
"Nah, I've got it, thank you," he grinned that devil-may-care-grin, which only he and children caught with their hands in the cookie jar could truly master, as he peered at her over the top of the boxes. "Maybe you could help me out with something though."  
  
"What?" she looked somewhat perplexed.  
  
"Could you tell me what's wrong with the little girl, Sara, in that room over there?" he cocked his head in the general direction.  
  
"I'm not really sup–"  
  
"Please?"  
  
Joy seemed to consider, then sighed, "Well I suppose it couldn't hurt just to tell you that her prognosis isn't good."  
  
Marty stared at her for a moment. "You mean to say..." his voice trailed off, choked into silence by an unsure and painful tightening in his throat. Joy averted her gaze, suddenly looking everywhere but at him...at one point even becoming intensely interested in her shoe, the toe of which she was grinding against the floor like a youngster who has just been scolded.  
  
"Marty, we have to go," Murdoch touched his shoulder, rousing him from the numb aftermath of shock.  
  
"Yeah...okay..." 


End file.
